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Tom put up his arm as if to ward a blow. "Don't you say it, Japhe, or I'll go mad again," he broke out. "I ain't sayin' nothin'. But who do you reckon it was told on you? Was there anybody else in the big woods that mornin'?" "Yes; there were three men testing the pipe-line. We both saw them, and Nan was scared stiff at sight of one of them; that's why I put her up in that hole."
And the tale tells how the King of Cyprus was defeated at sea by the Emir of Arsuf; and how Perion came unhurt from that battle, and by land relieved the garrison at Japhe, and was ennobled therefor; and was afterward called the Comte de la Foret. Then the King of Cyprus made peace with heathendom, and Perion left him.
"Brother Bill Layne, and Aunt M'randy, and Japhe Pettigrass. They-all went in town to stan' up with me and Nan." Then Tom remembered the figure coming swiftly across the lawns and the call of the voice he loved. Had Japheth told her, and was she hastening to make such reparation as she could? No matter, it was too late now.
There was the smell of the good red soil in the little story, a whiff of the home earth reminiscent and heartening. But the under-thought laid hold on Japheth and his change of heart. "Japhe was about the last man in Paradise, always excepting Major Dabney," he said half-musingly.
"But Brother Japheth allows that's about what he aims to do. It's sort o' curious the way it works out, too. About a week after the baptizin', Jim Bledsoe came down from Pine Knob with a horse to swap. 'Long about sundown he met up with Japhe, and struck him for a trade on a piebald that the Major wouldn't let run in the same lot with the Deer Trace stock.
"Yes; and then you came straight down here and told my uncle!" The hand he had been holding behind him came to the front, clutching a stone snatched up from the metaling of the pike as he ran. "If I should break your face in with this, Japhe Pettigrass, it wouldn't be any more than you've earned!" "By gravy! I tell Brother Silas on you, Tom-Jeff?
If livin' a dozen years and mo' with such a sancterfied woman as Martha Gordon won't make out to toll a man up to the pearly gates, I allow the' ain't no preacher goin' to do it." "Well, now; maybe that's the reason," drawled Japheth Pettigrass, the only unmarried man in the small circle of listeners; but he was promptly put down by the tall mountaineer. "Hold on thar, Japhe Pettigrass!
"Ya-as, I do; that's the toler'ble straight fact," drawled the other. "But I ain't so much to blame; times you ack like a boy yit, Tom-Jeff." Tom was silent again, turning a thing over in his mind. It was a time to bend all means to the one end, the trivial as well as the potent. "Tell me something, Japhe," he said, changing front in the twinkling of an eye.
"The spirit moved your Uncle Silas to come out to Little Zoar and hold a protracted meetin', and Japhe joined the mourners and was gathered into the fold." "Pshaw!" said Tom, in good-natured incredulity. "Why, the very meat and marrow of his existence is his horse-trading; and who could swap horses and tell the truth at the same time?" "I don't know," was the doubtful reply.
He was doubling his fists for defense when he saw who his assailant was. "Why, Tom-Jeff! what's ailin' ye?" he began; but Tom broke in with gaspings of rage. "Japhe Pettigrass, what did you think you saw last Wednesday forenoon up yonder at Big Rock Spring on the mountain? Tell it straight, this time, or by the God you don't believe in, I'll dig the truth out of you with my bare hands!"
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